Tag: Career

I don’t even know where to begin. Everything has changed, and no, that is not an exaggeration. I have a new home, a new career, and am starting grad school in about a month. I no longer have a car, a mother, nor sufficient income. I am the old person at work. I am the single mother who barely sees her son. I am the partner left wanting. I am a ball of stress, anxiety, and loneliness bound up tightly in a straight jacket with a bad buckle. I am scared. I am trying my best to make a life that I hope I won’t regret. I am nothing I used to be and everything I always hide.

New beginnings are enticing and exciting at first, however treading the path unknown is quite frankly terrifying. Less so when you have something to hold on to. Something steady to keep you anchored and sure footed. Without it, I feel like I could be swallowed into oblivion by a single wrong step. All the while I’m wondering, what have I done wrong already. Where have I faltered. Have I been so neglectful in my tireless effort to forge a better life that I should no longer be a preference? Are my actions something so egregious that I am someone to be placed aside for more satisfying company?

I thought love persevered; strengthened through time and overcoming countless trials. I am yet again reminded I must know nothing of love. Perhaps this is all my fault. I am not so big headed to think I am infallible. I make mistakes as I am human. I am a human who feels old, worthless, and unimportant to the one most important to me. Though I am sure this is probably not entirely accurate in reality, it is how I feel, and it fucking sucks. It really fucking sucks.

I’m wondering if this is the pace at which my life with continue to be lived. EVERYTHING in my life has change over and over again in less than a year. My divorce was finalized in July, my condo was on the market for 72 hours and sold in August, I moved out of my condo and into my mother’s place after extensive renovations and a massive cleanup effort in September, I filed for bankruptcy, applied for FAFSA, and most recently moved out of my mother’s place this month; a new record for shortest stay with her at 45 days. Now I face a job change, loss of my primary mode of transportation, graduate school applications, and who knows what else!?

I don’t think I could have gotten this far without my partner; who is also riding this insane rollercoaster ride. I feel bad for my son being displaced so much, but I do not have any control over that right now. When given the choice to have to move again or stay in an unhealthy home environment, I don’t hesitate to jump. I have spent too much time in my life “trapped” in a bad situation. I will not make that mistake again. Head down, chin up, I will trudge the road and trust that I’m getting where I need to be.

Most days I am just trying to pass time at work to get through the day to crawl into bed. It’s a sad state of life that many people share. It is not a routine I plan to continue until I retire. I do plan to obtain my Masters Degree in Social Work to get headed down a more engaging career path. Today, however, I feel like I want to tackle every tiny problem or project I can think of.

This happens periodically when things start falling in place, in terms of my plans and responsibilities. It’s like a snowball effect. One thing gets done or goes right and then another and before I know it my fingers are tying to keep up with my brain as I type and I’m focused on things thirty steps ahead. This happens in stark contrast to my exhausted body. It’s very strange. On one hand, I could totally crawl into be and fall asleep immediately. On the other hand, I could just as easily clean the entire bathroom like I wish I could be doing right now. I am very out of sync.

So many things have been going right lately. We are finally getting settled in to my mother’s place. My partner and I (but mostly him) have been getting things sorted and put away slowly but surely. We have new furniture (which he also put together by himself), and a the mattress platform has worked miracles for getting a better night’s sleep. I have a plan for saving for college for my son after listening to a webinar hosted by the bank who handles my 401K. I gave myself a hair cut, not for the first time, but with better than expected results and new techniques. I officially have no use for a hair stylist ever again. I have started bringing my lunches to work and have backup breakfast items here for days I’m running late. I have killed my ice cream addiction. That’s not that I still don’t enjoy it, but I don’t HAVE to have it every single night. I’ve grown tired of my kombucha lust, again, and am drinking water at night instead of plowing through 3-4 cans of seltzer. All this means more money in the bank; more money to save and invest in the future. How exciting is that?

I can’t remember the last time I felt like I had control of my finances or financial future. Honestly, I don’t think I ever have. I have always been so stressed about money. Barely scraping by; buried under debt. I paid my own way through college, scrapped together a little bit for a wedding, bought a cheap condo with $1000 down, worked multiple jobs at multiple times just to get by, and became super-ultra-mega coupon lady to get groceries as cheap as possible when I had the time as a stay-at-home mom. Now, the condo is sold, my divorce lawyer is paid, and my bankruptcy lawyer is paid. Once the bankruptcy is over with, I will buy a used car at some point and spend the next year-and-a-half to two years saving, working, going to school, and getting ready to launch life the right way. Getting a second chance with so many lessons learned is amazing, and sober no less! I am so very grateful for all of this.

I know I will hit bumps in the road. I am not invincible, nor am I doing this on my own. I have more help and support in my life now than I could have ever asked for. What I am driving at, is that the future looks bright. I am optimistic, happy, and hopeful. I don’t know what I did to deserve this chance to get it right. It was far from easy getting here, but for the first time in a long time, I feel like life isn’t too heavy to carry. I have a footing and believe in myself, my higher power and the support of others to keep moving forward toward an even better future.

I was never cut out for the corporate world. The thought of 9am-5pm jobs made me shudder. I could hardly handle 8am-3pm in high school. When I was little I would tell anyone to their face I would “NEVER” work for someone else. I was going to be my own boss. Reality really likes to kick me in the teeth.

Before I knew it, I was working for my high school as a tech intern, then Dominos for one “glorious” summer, then I started my brief job at Best Buy around 4:30am on Black Friday that year. Finally, I found myself with a 9-5pm job at the company my mom worked for, Adventist Midwest Management Services. This company was bought out several years ago, but I spent ten years there; on and off during school breaks and finally as a full time employee after graduating from college. My Bachelor of Arts degree is in English Literature. I graduated, however; at the end of 2009, and the job market was not doing well. I fell back into the world of medical billing/collections and haven’t been able to get myself out since.

I jumped to a different big medical billing company after I got married hoping for a challenge and upward mobility, but I just found more of the same monotonous boredom that tortured me all day long. So I made the decision to quit and become a personal trainer. I got certified the same night I passed another test; a pregnancy test. Back I went to the world of medical billing to save up for the bundle of responsibility now on its way.

It was hard to tell I was pregnant until month 7 or 8. I was running right up until I got put on bed rest. One long night in the hospital with steroid injections and magnesium sulfate fun, and then I was home. But my son was impatient to get out into the world. I was back at the hospital in for a ten day stay with talks with NICU doctors as well as a surgeon in the even I started hemorrhaging after giving birth. Due to a low lying placenta, I was at risk and a hysterectomy would have been the only salvation. Three weeks prior I’m running in the fall breeze, now I was hoping my son and I made it through alive.

Blood pressure medication, of all things, kept contractions under control. As long as I took it and was on bed rest, the little bugger would keep cooking and I got the first chance I had in years not to be working full time. I knew that as soon as I went off the medication it was “go time.” So my pregnancy was kind of unique in that I could time when I was going to go into labor. It was a Saturday morning when I stopped taking the medication. I went out with my mom to go buy a baby blanket and get some food and fresh air before the big event. My son was born at 5:43 am the next morning. Everything went fine aside from major game plan change of getting an epidural at 6cm. I wanted an all natural birth, but for all intents and purposes, I had been having contractions for a month and a half. Enough was enough and god bless that anesthesiologist!

Anyway, back to the topic of work. I found being a stay-at-home-mom to be far more work than a 9-5pm job, but it was much more rewarding and far less boring. I was fortunate enough to have almost two years at home with my son before I had to reenter the workforce full time. It was necessary as I had filed for an order of protection against my ex and (obviously) planned to file for divorce. In the span of a week and a half, I got a brand new car without a penny down or a job, found a daycare I wasn’t completely terrified to leave my son at, and found a job that started the Monday after I interviewed. Talk a bout a whirlwind; It was a crazy, stressful, and challenging time.

After the initial anxiety of leaving my son in the care of strangers for 9-10 hours a day, I found some appreciation for being back in the world of adults; working to support myself and my son. Alas, it was again in the field of medical billing, and after no more than six months I was, once again, bored to tears. A mixture of infatuation with my new love, hatred for my cubicle jail, stress from the divorce, and lack or relying on AA for support lead to a period of relapses. I missed too much work and lost my job because of that. Despite a solid month of looking for something in a different field, there was nothing that would compensate me at a rate I needed to survive. So, I wound up at my previous company’s biggest competitor; once again, in a cubicle.

Part of me thinks that I stayed with my ex as long as I did for the opportunity to be a stay-at-home-mom. I hated him, but I also hated working a 9-5. Eventually, I saw that if I was going to survive and do what was best for myself and my son, I had to get away from my ex. So now we are divorced, I am working a job I don’t love but need and can’t complain about, and I’m moving back in with my mother. I suppose I am hoping in the interim, I might find a way to carve out a new career path. If I stay on the course I am currently stuck in, I am certain it will eventually kill me spiritually. That may sound over dramatic, but you don’t know how much I loath the ice box rat maze in which I spend 40 hours a week.

I don’t know what to talk about today. I am feeling a bit ill physically, but mentally I’m doing pretty well. I’m not even grouchy it’s Monday. I have this feeling, since the divorce was finalized, that I have new found freedom to identify my goals in life. Also, because I am working my program, I am finding the courage to pursue them.

But there are so many potential paths to take. It is hard to focus in on one thing. Obviously the most pressing necessities right now are figuring out my finances, selling the condo, and finding a new place to live. However, just focusing on this is anxiety inducing, and there is only so much I can control about it each day.

So I let my thoughts stray to new career paths, perhaps taking a few classes to get certified as a teacher, new books I should read, places I should go, and things I could do to make an impact in my life and in the lives of other’s.

There is so much I want to do. I want to continue learning Japanese and some day visit Japan. I’d love if I could go teach there for a year, but that wouldn’t be possible for quite some time. Perhaps I should teach here? Should I learn to be a yoga instructor? I could write and publish an E-Book. Would my time be best spent doing more service in AA? Then of course there is a part of me that just wants to nap for a solid week. Ha.

I guess ultimately, I’m feeling like a free bird with too many possible destinations. To stay grounded, I’ll have to meditate on things before launching on a new journey. The future looks bright, the present is good, and I’m content as well as optimistic about possibilities for what comes next.